LONDON - A driver falling asleep at the wheel may have caused the train crash in which 13 people were killed and more than 70 injured.
Police were pursuing the theory that the driver of a Land Rover, pulling a trailer with a car on it, had nodded off as
he drove along the M62 before dawn, setting off the series of events that ended in the devastating head-on collision.
The vehicle lurched off the motorway and carried on for 90 metres down an embankment before coming to rest on the southbound section of the east coast main line between Newcastle and London.
Just 40 seconds later, an express passenger train travelling at about 190 kph slammed into the Land Rover and then became derailed at Great Heck, near Selby in North Yorkshire, and continued upright for half a mile.
The Great North Eastern Railways train with nearly 100 people on board then crashed almost head-on into an oncoming train loaded with more than 100 tons of coal travelling at about 96 kph.
Coaches and other wreckage were hurled into nearby fields by what is believed to have been the highest speed collision in the history of the rail network.
